


10-8-05

by ivermectin



Series: gossip girl metafic [2]
Category: Gossip Girl (TV 2007)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Meet-Cute, i think this one turned out really well!, so: it's whatever, some canon typical dan snarking against nate archibald, that said: i wrote an essay like this once and my english teacher penalized me by a grade, used a lot of fragments and phrases because i feel like dan in high school Would, yes this is the essay thing he gets published in the New Yorker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-11 23:15:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28625565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivermectin/pseuds/ivermectin
Summary: "I was accidentally invited to a birthday party. I met a girl there. She said two sentences to me, and I never forgot her."
Relationships: Dan Humphrey/Serena van der Woodsen
Series: gossip girl metafic [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2096118
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	10-8-05

**Author's Note:**

> so, there are two different "canon" versions of this story - what Dan talks about multiple times during the show and references re: Serena saying she'll get him a drink and then disappearing (lmao) and then the bit in the flashback in season 6, where they talk about Hello Kitty and whatnot. I took bits and pieces from both canons.
> 
> editing to add: the first 3 paragraphs are a bit sloppy, yes. but i tried to stay true to the brief glimpse of the paper we saw Dan give Serena in Roman Holiday, which is why the sentences are a bit off. i kept considering changing them, but i do want this to feel like it stays true to canon, so. whoops!
> 
> if you can't see the image (i can see it on my laptop but not on my phone, idk why) [here's a link.](https://www.homeofthenutty.com/gossipgirl/screencaps/albums/111/111GossipGirl1086.jpg)

I was accidentally invited to a birthday party. I met a girl there. She said two sentences to me, and I never forgot her.

Her name was Serena, and she was the most beutiful girl I ever saw. She spoke to me, she was tremendously sweet and keen about the whole thing, brushing over my awkwardness, even. My rambling would have got started again, if it hadn’t been for her enthusiasm, I’d probably have run, anxiety in full swing. She was an enormous, cataclysmic, disastrous Achilles heel for me, detailed by the thudding ache of my heart. I wanted to live on a farm, living my life in isolation with nothing but plants around me, or go on the run.

I was given a card which didn’t have a name on it. Sometimes I felt like I didn’t have a name on me, either. I was just a boy, invisible to everyone. The card shouldn’t have warranted such joy, of course, but I was naïve. I allowed myself to be naïve, to imagine a world in which the lacrosse captains and popular girls of high school actually smiled at me when they saw me; a world in which I had more than one friend.

I went to the party anyway, even though I knew I didn’t belong there. Told myself, if they wanted to get rid of me, they’d have to do it themselves. And then I saw Serena.

She was at the top of a flight of stairs, looking down. I was looking up at her. I’d have a crick in my neck later, but it didn’t matter. I felt like I was alive for the first time, electric and full of light, like someone had lit a matchstick and set off a firework in the middle of my chest.

I’m not supposed to be here, I wanted to tell her. I’m just this awkward kid in your year. You don’t know who I am. Nobody knows who I am. But then, something miraculous happened. She looked at me, really and truly looked at me. And she smiled, and said hi.

So far, the only person who’d said hi to me was the bland, blonde Ken doll of a lacrosse captain, and he’d had the nerve to call me Matt as he swung his arm around me, chillingly casual. I wondered through a haze of discomfort, what had really happened to Matt, whether he even looked like me, why he hadn’t made it to the party, what he would say if he saw me here, being mistaken for him. And then, as quickly as he’d come up to me, the jock was gone, leaving me with confused indignation and the knowledge that I was entirely unmemorable.

I was a little resentful as I lingered at this party where I did not belong, at this party where nobody believed I even existed. And then I was at the banister of the stairs, looking up. And there she was, the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.

Imagine the most beutiful girl you can imagine. Whatever you’re thinking, this girl, Serena, was even more beautiful than that. She was legendarily beautiful, Renaissance painting beautiful, they’ll carve her face in stone to remember it forever beautiful. She had light, airy laughter that sounded like how the sun would sound, if sunshine ever made a noise. But more miraculous than any of that is the way she spoke to me, like she genuinely cared about what I had to say.

I fumbled through it. Said something that, in retrospect, made no sense, about my cousin sister’s Hello Kitty themed bat mitzvah. Serena just laughed, and in a voice sweeter than powdered sugar, told me that she loved Hello Kitty, too. I remember being relieved, and she saw it, and she laughed, told me she was kidding. “Oh,” I’d said. It was awkward, beyond awkward. But she smiled at me anyway, like she didn’t mind that it was awkward, like she didn’t care at all.

“Let me get you a drink?” she asked. And I said yes, the feeling in my heart like that of a helium balloon, let loose in the sky; floating and floating and floating.

Girls like Serena don’t hang out with the nobodies of the world, though, it’s the status quo. She disappeared in the crowd with one last promising smile in my direction, and she didn’t come back. I didn’t resent her for it. Serena was everyone’s dream girl after all, not just mine. Everyone who’d met her would fall in love with her. She was the life and soul of every party, but I’d seen her at school too, and on the MET steps, I’d seen the way people flocked to her, the way she made them feel loved and truly appreciated. She must’ve been really nice, I reckoned, to wield so much power in such an unconcerned way.

I couldn’t resent her for disappearing. I still hung around at the party, watching people from the corner of my eye, feeling like a ghost. I could see her in the crowd but never for more than a few seconds at a time. A toss of blonde hair. A flash of sequins. A joyful giggle. She belonged to everyone in the room, everyone who’d been invited to the party on purpose. She didn’t belong to me.

When I got home, after I showered and changed, I lay down on the sofa, contemplating my life now, my life post-Serena. In a lot of ways, I felt like the same person I’d always been, but in other ways it felt like a rebirth, like a reawakening. Ever since Vanessa, my only friend, had left the city, I’d been truly alone, so alone, and I’d embraced it, even. I’d thought it was inevitable. Serena’s sunny smile warmed something in my heart that I thought was dead. I allowed myself to daydream about her, about getting to know her, about being her friend, about holding her hand.

I was accidentally invited to a birthday party. I still don’t know whose birthday it was. I don’t think anybody realised I was there. But I met a girl there. She spoke to me, genuinely and carelessly, all warmth and kindness, and then she was gone, and then I was forgotten. But while she spoke to me – as she said those two sentences – it felt like I was a person again, not just a lonely ghost dwelling around people who only ever looked through me.

Her name was Serena, and I’d seen her around, sure, but we’d never spoken to each other before. Lying on the sofa, staring at the ceiling, I knew I’d remember this moment always. I liked the person I could dream of being when I was thinking about her. Maybe I was nobody, but the boy Serena had smiled at today at that party could have been someone. Maybe he could make her smile like that all the time.

It wasn’t my birthday, but I made a wish, anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> nate archibald whom? _I_ am pretending to be dan humphrey better than that guy could ever.  
> anyway this was fun!! i got to finally use the inhumane amount of love i have for serena in some way, hah.


End file.
